Girl Meets Boy AU
by imaginarybird
Summary: A little what if ficlet that goes a bit darker than they would on the show, especially so early in the first season. What if something happened when the kids were without their phones? About as much Rucas as there was in the episode itself. Complete
Notes: This story starts while the gang is in the library, sometime after Lucas and Riley have broken the ice and really started talking. Also, I'm ignoring the fact that Farkle was the only one in the group to bring anything to actually do work with, because I'm fairly confident that while Maya is the type to show up to a homework study session without any of her things, Riley and Lucas are not. So let's pretend they had their bags with them.

* * *

"We should probably get going." Lucas says as the librarian walks away after letting them know the library will be closing soon. He starts gathering up his things. "Is Maya going back to your place with you?"

A little part inside of Riley heats up and flutters rapidly. She can't help it. She loves that even though Lucas is new he's already figured out how things between her and Maya work. "No, she has to go home tonight." She glances over to where Maya and Farkle are receiving the same warning from the librarian about closing time. Maya does a couple of signals with her hands and wiggles her eyebrows at her; Riley makes a few return gestures and when Maya flashes her a thumbs up, she turns back to Lucas. "Her mom works just down the street. She's gonna meet her there."

"Oh, cool." Lucas nods. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are your parents picking you up here?" Riley knows she must look confused, because Lucas explains himself right away. "I can wait with you, if they are. I still have some time before my parents expect me."

Riley shakes her head, smiling. "That's OK. I'm walking home."

"Then I'll walk with you." Lucas volunteers and pushes his chair away from the table. He stands, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and waits for Riley to finish packing her things.

"You don't need to do that."

Maya and Farkle walk out and say goodbye with a pair of grinning waves as they pass. Maya adds one last suggestive wriggle of her eyebrows before sliding out the door. Riley blushes, keeping her gaze firmly on her belongings as she packs while Lucas talks.

"Yeah, I do."

"But you'd be going out of your way. We don't live near each other."

Lucas raises an eyebrow. "So?"

"Soooo, why bother making your walk longer? Or making yourself late?"

He sighs. "Riley, it's late and it's dark. I don't know the city super well yet but I know it can get dangerous, especially at night, and you don't have a phone right now. Your dad would have good reason to kill me if I let you walk home alone and anything happened."

Riley narrows her eyes. "Daddy's not allowed to touch you. My mom said if he crosses the line I get to show the whole class his baby pictures."

"As much as I'd like to see that," Lucas smiles, his eyes glinting. "I think you're missing the point. I want to make sure you get home safe, and as long as I call from your place to let my parents know I'm on my way, they won't mind that I'll be a little late. So will you please let me walk you home?"

Riley steadfastly avoids his gaze, staring instead at the buckle on her bag as she does it up. She suddenly wishes Maya were still there to shove her in the right direction. Is she supposed to say yes? Walking home alone with a boy at night, even one as sweet as Lucas, seems like a big step. She's not ready for that. Her dad definitely isn't.

But the library is far enough away from her apartment building that she _is_ a little unsure about walking home alone. And it's not like Lucas is asking her as some sort of a date thing. She doesn't even know if he's looking at her like that. He's just being a good friend, trying to make sure she gets home safe. And Riley does want to get home safe, so maybe she should just…

"Sure." She smiles and slings her bag over her shoulder. From behind the desk the librarian is none too quiet about muttering her own 'finally'. Riley feels her cheeks heat up _again_. "Let's get going."

They leave the library and their (relatively) easy conversation continues. Riley tells Lucas about spending the summers when she was little in Philadelphia with her grandparents (and oddly enough her dad's old principal). Lucas reveals that his parents brought him to Philly once because they like their vacations to have educational value, and they share a laugh over their mutual bewilderment over the popularity of the cheesesteak. Two and a half blocks into their journey, and Riley is feeling much better about her choice to say yes and walk with him; she liked Lucas before partnering with him for this anti-technology assignment and she finds herself liking him even more now that they are getting to know each other.

Then Lucas realizes that he left his jacket (and consequently his keys) back in the library. Since he needs to hurry to make it back before the doors are locked and Riley knows her athletic skills are only slightly more existent than a mythical creature from Harry Potter, she insists that he can run back and she'll wait for him to return. It takes her pointing out that they're next to a well-lit ATM vestibule with a security camera before Lucas agrees to that plan.

He jogs off back towards the library and Riley wraps her arms around her torso, leaning back against the wall of the vestibule and sighs, contentedly imagining what might come of their newfound connection the next day at school. She's so caught up in her fantasy of her dad getting frustrated with them because they're so good at talking to each other now that they won't be able to stop even during class, that it takes Riley several moments to realize that someone else has approached the vestibule.

She takes in the tension in the older man's frame—the way his eyes dart around so rapidly and he's rocking on his heels—and blushes, realizing that he's probably in a hurry to get somewhere and she's just standing there, blocking the way. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm just waiting for someone, you go right ahead." Riley shifts to the side, clearing a path to the ATM.

Only the man doesn't step forward. And what he pulls out of his pocket isn't a bank card.

* * *

At first Lucas doesn't see Riley as he gets back to ATM vestibule and he worries that maybe he has been reading the situation wrong. Maybe he hasn't been connecting with the adorable brunette with a smile brighter than the sun over the stacks of library books. Maybe she was only humoring him, but she really thinks he's a giant dork for being so moved by helping to deliver the baby horse and she's taken the opportunity of him forgetting his coat and keys to run away and get out of an awkward situation.

Then he gets a bit closer and sees her sitting on the ground. The strange feeling in his chest ebbs back; Riley hasn't left, she just gotten bored and sat down. Her books are even scattered around her. That strikes him as a little odd because he hasn't been gone _that_ long, but from what he can tell about Riley she takes her schoolwork seriously so he figures she must have just decided to work on an assignment from another class while she waited for him to get back.

A moment and a few steps later, Lucas realizes that Riley's not reading, she's crying.

He starts to run.

First he worries that something horrible must have happened to someone in her family but it occurs to him nearly instantly that she has no phone and therefore no way to have gotten any news. His mind races with other possibilities, each one more concerning and terrifying than the last, and when he reaches the vestibule and gets a really good look at Riley he nearly turns to full-blown panic.

"Riley? Oh my...what happened? Are you OK?"

The knees of her leggings are torn, the skin beneath raw and bloody. Her palms, he notes as he grabs on to her shoulders and tries to assess the situation when she doesn't answer him, are in a similar state.

"Riley, what happened?"

She tries to jerk out of his touch. When her eyes finally find his it's like a light turns on behind them. Riley gasps and wipes at her face with the back of her hand. "He-He wanted money." She hiccups. "But I didn't have much and he was so mad..."

Lucas puts it together quickly. Some jerk had seen Riley, a young girl out by herself, and seized the opportunity, exactly the sort of scenario he had been worried about. Exactly the sort of thing his parents had ranted about when he told them about the assignment and Mr. Matthews taking all of their phones.

He just had to be an idiot and forget his keys. Now Riley's hurt and terrified and he has no idea how he's supposed to help her.

"It's OK. You're safe now." Lucas reaches for his bag. "I'm gonna get help." He starts to dig through his things. His mind is so focused on his own panic and anger and everything else that he can't remember which is the right pocket and he just ends up clumsily pawing through everything in the backpack.

"Please don't go." Riley says. Her crying is slowing, but her voice is still tiny. She's hoarse and strained and shaky, and when Lucas looks at her again he notices her throat is reddening; his heart skips a beat, wondering what that could mean.

"I'm not leaving." His fingers finally hit pay dirt. Lucas pulls out the borrowed phone and starts to dial. "I'm gonna get help."

" _911, what's your emergency?"_

"My friend's just been mugged."

* * *

It takes everything Riley has to keep her hands from shaking while paramedic is looking them over. The antiseptic he's dabbing on the scrapes stings, but it's nothing like the raw feeling moments after the impact on the pavement. It's nothing like the terror of seeing the knife gripped in the mugger's hand as he demanded everything she had, or the sensation of the air being forcefully pushed from her lungs when he shoved her against the wall.

She's never experienced anything like it before and now she has to keep reminding herself that it's over and she can breathe.

The police had gotten there a few minutes after Lucas called (and in the back of her mind she knows she should wonder where he had gotten the phone from but she can't bring herself to question it). The paramedics were there a minute or two after that. All the lights and sirens led to a small crowd of onlookers gathering. A crowd that they move her to the back of the ambulance to shield her from. A crowd that her dad has to push his way through when he gets there, nearly twenty minutes after the police call to notify him of what had happened.

"Riley?! Riley?!"

His voice cuts through the icy haze that's settled in her mind and Riley jumps in her seat, knocking the paramedic's hand in the process. "Daddy!" The next thing Riley knows her dad has his arms around her in a crushing embrace, the most comfortable she's felt since the man pointed the knife in her face. Her dad runs his hand over her hair, gripping her head to his chest as the she loses control over her tears once more, and he's murmuring things in her ear that she can't quite understand.

Eventually he pulls back, keeping a hold on her shoulders as he looks her over. "I'm sorry, Riley. I'm so sorry."

She doesn't understand why everyone is apologizing. Lucas apologized while they were waiting for the police. Now her dad. Neither of them had anything to do with this. But Riley's not sure if she's missing something, or if she's supposed to tell them that or let them apologize anyway, and she can't find the strength or the words to do it if she is.

She lets the paramedic guide her back to sitting down so they can keep working, and listens to her dad and Lucas talk when he approaches from the side.

"Thank you for getting help, Mr. Friar. I've never been happier to have a student cheat on an assignment."

"It's my dad's phone, sir. I promise, I didn't touch it when we were working, but my parents didn't agree with sending me out in a city I'm still getting used to without a way to get in touch."

"Remind me to thank them."

One of the police officers comes back and introduces themselves. After a minute or so of conversation with her dad, they ask her to explain what happened.

Riley reminds herself to breathe again. "I was waiting at the ATM for Lucas to run back to the library and get his keys. A minute or two after he left, this guy came up...I thought he wanted to use the machine, so I stepped aside and told him to go ahead but…but instead of an ATM card he pulled out a… a knife." She stares at the badge on the officer's uniform while she talks and does her best to ignore how much it hurts. She can't look at Lucas or her dad; she can't see their reactions if she's going to stay in control.

"He told me to give him my money...and my phone. Anything worth something, he said. I wanted to do what he said but I was so scared and my hands were shaking...I couldn't get my wallet out of my bag, and it only had a few dollars in it anyways...He—he yelled when I wasn't fast enough and he got angrier when I told him it was all I had. He grabbed my bad and dumped out all over the ground, only I wasn't lying so there wasn't anything else in there. And when I tried again to tell him I didn't have anything, not even a phone, he still didn't believe me.

"He was so mad..." She feels herself losing her composure, but all she wants to do is get this done and go home. "He shoved me up against the wall. He had his arm pressed against my throat. I could barely breathe, and then he-." Riley drops off to swallow and find a way to say what happened. It feels nearly impossible when she doesn't even want to think about it. "Then he started to...to search my pockets. He p-put his hand in my jacket, my d-dress…

"I wanted to scream for help but my brain wouldn't talk to my mouth or something...All I could do was stand there while he..." Riley shakes her head. They already know what was happening. She doesn't need to say it again. "Eventually he figured out I really didn't have anything else and he threw me to the ground and took off."

Riley finishes the telling, still staring at the officer's badge. She can feel her dad's eyes on her and Lucas' eyes on her and just knows that they're thinking about how stupid she was. She shouldn't have been waiting alone in the vestibule, she should have just gone back to the library with Lucas. All of this just because she didn't feel like running...She can't bare to look at either of them. If she doesn't look their disappointment won't become real and she can stay in the bubble where her dad will protect her from anything.

"Do you remember what the guy looked like? Or what he was wearing?"

* * *

"I think she's finally asleep." Topanga murmurs, glancing down to where Riley is safely tucked in, sandwiched between her and Cory on the bed. Her daughter had grown out of the habit of crawling into their bed after nightmares or pleading to sleep with them by the time she was in kindergarten, and it hadn't been their intent to have her join them tonight but neither she nor Cory could bare to deny her when she begged to stay with her dad where she felt safe. Not after tonight.

One minute they were coloring with Auggie, the next they were getting a phone call from the police saying that Riley had been mugged. Topanga could swear that the world had stopped spinning and it didn't start up again until Cory got back to the apartment, half carrying their daughter and she could hold Riley in her arms and see for herself that she was all right.

Topanga will happily put up with cramped sleeping for a night to reassure herself and her family that everything was going to be OK.

When Cory doesn't answer her, Topanga moves her gaze from Riley to him. Her husband is sitting stiffly, one hand absently running over Riley's hair while he stares down at her. Topanga reaches over and gently nudges his shoulder. "Cory...are you OK?"

"Our daughter got hurt tonight." He says flatly. He doesn't look up.

"I know."

"Our daughter got hurt because of me."

"You had absolutely nothing to do with what happened tonight."

"No, she said that the guy who did this wanted money and her phone and that he didn't believe her when she said she didn't have one. He got violent, he _touched_ her because she didn't have a phone to hand over. And when he finally left she had no way to call for help. Who knows how long she would have been sitting there if Lucas hadn't gotten back when he did? If his parents hadn't realized how _stupid_ I was being and made him take a phone?"

"Cory, you were not being stupid. Your assignment did not make this happen. You were trying to show the kids the world outside of their technology. It was a great idea. The school approved your lesson plan."

"Well the school board's a bunch of idiots too. I put students in danger. I would be fired if this had happened to any other student. I _should_ be fired."

Topanga nudges him again, a little less gently this time, but is mindful of her volume all the same. "Cory Matthews, you stop that right now. This was not your fault. Unfortunately these things happen in the world we live in. What happened was terrible, but it could have happened even if Riley had five phones with her. When we were her age we didn't have cell phones and our parents were letting us run around Philadelphia. Anything could have happened to us. Were our parents stupid?"

He crosses his arms over his chest petulantly. "Looking back on it now, yes."

"No, they weren't. And neither are you. Something terrible happened, yes. But the only person to blame for it is the mugger. And the police will find and deal with him. The only burden you should be placing across your shoulders is doing all that we can to make sure Riley gets through this."

"Topanga, Riley-,"

"Is home and safe with us now. Nothing else matters."

Cory looks down at Riley once more. The bruises on her neck are slowly becoming darker, and her brow is pulled into a deep frown. But she's there. She's there and safe and she will be OK. "Nothing else matters."

* * *

"Life without phones is...different." Riley says, standing in front of the class the next day. Her voice croaks a little and she's glad the presentation is a short one. Her dad had offered them an extension (and technically a chance for her to stay home today) but Riley couldn't bare the thought of accepting either offer. She already feels jumpy and paranoid and like everyone is staring at her thinking that she's the big idiot who didn't know better than to stand around an ATM and get robbed, she doesn't need to let them think she's too weak or scared to move on from it too. "It's scary, because you can say anything and the people around you are listening. But it's really cool too. Because you can say anything and the people around you are listening. Friends talk to each other, but real friends listen. We forget that when we glue ourselves to our screens."

She goes back to her seat, and glances back at Lucas, who smiles softly in return.

The rest of the class goes by quickly enough. A few more kids talk about what they found and it's nice because she can listen to them and other than the persistent ache in her bones from being thrown around she can pretend that it's a normal day and nothing happened the night before. Until the bell rings. She's moving a bit slower than usual, and while Maya, Farkle, and Lucas have been kind enough to move slowly with her, but it doesn't stop her from hearing the not-so-whispered questions and comments from her classmates, who are all curious as to what exactly happened. That's enough to force her right back into reality, a reality that seems a little more nerve-wracking when her dad asks her to hang back and sends the others on their way.

She's been wanting his comfort and protection ever since the mugging and he's been indulging her but Riley knows he's disappointed in her. He can barely meet her eyes when he's dealing with her. At some point, she's sure that the other shoe will drop and he'll lecture her about putting herself in the position to get mugged and tell her to grow up and she'll have to just accept it and move on because she deserves it.

She just really doesn't want it to happen yet. Not when it still feels so fresh.

"How're you doin', honey?"

"I'm OK." Riley tucks her hair back behind her ears, feeling a bit safer to hear the warmth and concern in her dad's voice. "Maya, Farkle, and Lucas have made themselves my bodyguards. Lucas is strangely good at scaring people off, actually."

Her dad nods. "Yeah. I've noticed that." A long beat passes. "Are you sure you want to stick around all day? If you're feeling overwhelmed or anything we can go-,"

Riley shakes her head and presses her lips together. She needs to start being stronger. "No, I'm OK. I mean, I feel so stupid now that I'm thinking about everything, but I know nothing's gonna happen here. I'll be fine."

"Why would you feel stupid?" Her dad frowns.

She can't answer him. He has to know and just wants to hear her say it for some reason. She can't believe she even opened the door for this and finds herself irrationally hoping that if she stays quiet the door will slam closed once more.

"Riley, what happened last night wasn't your fault." He guides her over to sit on the edge of his desk. "You have to know that. It could have happened to anyone. Anywhere. Anytime. It was nothing that you did."

"But I shouldn't have been alone. I should've stayed with Lucas." Riley protests, unable to contain herself. "If I hadn't been there…You know I'm right. That's why you haven't been able to look at me."

Her dad looks like she's punched him in the gut. He briefly closes his eyes and sighs before he looks directly at her. "Riley, I'm having a hard time looking at you because I feel guilty about what happened. Not because of anything you did. You're scared and in pain and at least some of that feels like my fault but I am _so_ proud of you for getting through something so awful. You've been incredibly brave and if you feel like I'm somehow disappointed in you for what happened then I'm sorry because I _never_ want you to feel like that."

"How is it your fault? You were at home with mom and Auggie. You couldn't have done anything."

"My head knows that." He nods. "But my heart keeps telling me that you didn't have a phone because of me, and that you wouldn't have been out there if my assignment hadn't sent you to the library. And as a parent it's really hard to see your child go through something like this and not feel responsible, even when it's something you had absolutely no control over. But I _can_ control how I handle that now, and I should never have done anything that made you feel like I was blaming you."

Riley almost understands what he means. She had been so ashamed the night before that she'd had a hard time looking at him, and maybe that had made him feel worse. She knows how it felt when he wouldn't meet her eyes...The whole thing actually does seem a little stupid because it would have saved them both a lot of worrying if they had just talked to each other. Wasn't that what the lesson of the assignment was in the first place?

"You can't protect me from everything. I know if you had been there you would have done everything you could to keep me safe, but you can't always be there for me. I'm growing up."

"You don't have to."

She can't help but giggle when her dad shakes his head. "I'll do it slowly." Riley pauses, glancing down at her bandaged hands briefly. "Thank you for explaining. And for not thinking I'm stupid."

"Riley, nothing you did last night was stupid. I'll remind you of that every day if I need to."

Her dad hugs her, and Riley is happy to linger in the embrace; she may know that she's perfectly safe in the halls of her school, but there's still a part of her that's on edge and she's happy to hide away in her dad's arms and make that part be quiet for a moment. "I'm really glad I can still come to you. Even if I am growing up."

"I don't care how grown up you get. You're my daughter. You can always come to me."


End file.
